


With Friends Like These

by Eggcap



Category: Romeo and Juliet, Shakespeare - Fandom
Genre: Drugs mention, Highschool AU, Modern AU, Other, romeo and juliet - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-21
Updated: 2014-11-21
Packaged: 2018-02-26 12:13:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,158
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2651663
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Eggcap/pseuds/Eggcap
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Benvolio wakes up to find Mercutio on his couch again.</p>
            </blockquote>





	With Friends Like These

**Author's Note:**

> I'm not exactly sure what I was going for here, but I really love these characters, I've even drawn designs for this AU and if people like it, maybe I can put this links in here! Enjoy!

"Mercutio, move your ass! You know my parents don't want you here."

Benvolio was replied to with nothing but a sleepy chuckle from the body he crouched beside. His long time "friend", who was really his cousin's buddy that he'd been forced to bond with over the years, had crashed on his couch after showing up half drunk and bloodied in the middle of the night, Benvolio tasked with cleaning and dressing his myriad of wounds. Yet again he found himself wondering why he couldn't have more normal friends, friends who weren't his cousin's, friends who didn't think knife fights were a good way to spend their Sunday evenings. Essentially, friends who weren't Mercutio. 

"What time is it?" Mercutio groaned, reaching out to hook his fingers in Benvolio's shirt collar, pulling him close. "Is the day really that far gone that you feel the need to shake these weary, wounded bones awake?"  
"These weary wounded bones need to go to school unless they want someone calling home again." Benvolio sneered, almost disgusted that he knew the other boy's record so well.  
"Oh, let them call!" Mercutio trilled, "Having an agent on the inside does me well, they can't behead the court jester when he's the king's favorite, now that would just screw the whole system, wouldn't it? My good old uncle would never wish the pain of perilous expulsion on a soul such as mine!" 

Benvolio rolled his eyes and hobbled to the foyer, leaving the other boy. At least Mercutio was up and moving, hopefully in the direction of the door, before his parents woke up. Mercutio soon slipped in beside him, picking at the Superman and Mickey Mouse band-aids layered over his abdomen. 

"I didn't have any real bandages." Benvolio lopsidedly grinned, pulling on his backpack as Mercutio went for the doorknob.  
"Did it need stitches?"  
Benvolio gulped.  
"Probably."  
"You didn't take me to a hospital?" Mercutio's eyes widened, an eyebrow arching so dangerously high that Benvolio feared it might fly away.  
"I didn't know if you-!"  
"That scar will be grotesque, terrifying, so mind numbingly awful! I'll look like a jolly old pirate run through with a sword, back to haunt the living with my seaworthy tongue and unimaginable flesh wounds!" Mercutio sighed, loud and proud, as he strutted down the driveway, lacking the appropriate attire for such a cold day, and grinning wide. "Oh god bless you, Benvolio! God bless!"  
"You're fucking weird." Benvolio groaned, catching up to the taller boy; he reached within the the fluffy pocket of his jacket, retrieving a blunt he'd been saving for a morning as frustrating as this one.  
"Insult me and then you're not even going to share..." Mercutio turned up his nose at the drugs, "Typical." 

Benvolio smiled cleverly as he lit the rolled paper between his lips, the first breath of fumes every ounce as comforting as he imagined it would be in the brisk air. The walk to school was short, but took longer in the blustery weather. Benvolio hobbled along in his oversized coat, a cloud of white smoke sticking close to his head and perfuming his hair with the murkiness nearly everyone associated him with these days; Mercutio, never able to stay silent for long, ostentatiously recounted last night's drinking session with some skinny Capulet chick he'd met, his brawl with Tybalt and some sloppy making out that may or may not have happened somewhere in between. Benvolio always found him kind of hard to follow, and the weed definitely wasn't helping in that department. 

"Why do you talk about Capulets so much, dude? Just 'cause they invite you to their parties doesn't mean they like you."  
"You're the one they don't like, Benny." Mercutio picked his fingernails, "Not my fault I have friends on both sides of this pissing match you call a rivalry."  
Benvolio scuffed his shoes against the concrete, waiting for the light to change so they could walk, tuning Mercutio out as he ranted about the stupidity of feuding. Big talk, he thought, for someone who got into fights with the same guy almost every other day. 

The little glowing man lit up on the post across the street, the signal for the blind buzzing almost as annoyingly as Mercutio, and Benvolio jogged off to the other side. Mercutio stood, rooted to the opposite bank, spindly arms shaking from his lack of a coat as he nonchalantly tapped away on the keys of his cell phone.  
"Update our schedule, secretary. School's cancelled due to conflict. Apparently his royal lovesickness is in dire need of our assistance."  
Benvolio rolled his eyes, taking another deep suck of the smoke. Why did he even try, Mercutio might as well just drop out at this rate. As he stumbled back across the road, zoning out once more as Mercutio dragged him to the park, he toyed with the idea of dropping out himself. It's not like he intended to do anything grand with his life. He'd always been in his cousin's shadow, a pothead since junior high. Then again, no one moved out of Verona anyways, and he wasn't the only drugbag running around. As if he was reading the thoughts of the shorter boy, Mercutio snorted.  
"You go through more grass than anyone I've ever met."  
"Least it's just grass." Benvolio breathed, squinting up at Mercutio, "Not like some people."  
"Oh, don't give me that! I may partake but I'm not like some of the boys and girls who wander these weary walls, snorting and shooting 'till they bleed and cry, and fly where the fairies do and never come down until they realize they've reached heaven." He laughed, "To which they then fall, tumbling into graves for we all know hell was desperate for them all along-"  
"Since when do you snort and shoot?" Benvolio interrupted, a pang of worry to his voice. "That hard shit isn't worth it."

Mercutio chuckled.  
"You worry in the same way Romeo Loves. Too much."  
Benvolio eyed the other's pale arms regardless, checking for thick veins or telltale sores. Mercutio's eyes got far off, and Benvolio decided to back off the topic, dropping his charred blunt to the ground and stamping it into the woodchips before glancing around. "Speaking of Romeo, where is he?"  
"He told me he was already here, well to be exact he said-" Mercutio whipped out his phone, some cheap pay-and-go thing from the gas station, and read Romeo's text in a painfully dramatized pitch, "He was stolen away from his books by his weighty heart, which called him to his mistress despair, the only comfort he finds these days." Mercutio sighed wistfully, his smile returned, peeking under the playground equipment for their friend.  
"Well that does sure as shit sound like him." Benvolio rolled his eyes, taking a seat on the bench as Mercutio continued to search and weave bizarre poems about Romeo and his so called emotional torment.


End file.
